Bike Advocacy

Urban Legend

If the idea Ryan Oelkers had was unlikely&mdash;to introduce the sport of bike racing to kids living in the toughest inner-city neighborhoods of Philadelphia&mdash;the outcome was absolutely unforeseeable

john brant

Pretty soon after that first practice the kids were taking longer rides. They would mount up at the school, taking out the bikes from an old classroom in the school basement, then ride in a paceline 3 miles to Fairmount Park. Leroy felt strong and proud pedaling through his neighborhood, wearing his cycling clothes. The drug dealers and corner boys showed them respect. They never gave the team any trouble or came after their bicycles. At Fairmount Park the team would meet up with other Cadence Foundation riders, from the Neighborhood Bike Works, and from a housing project in South Philadelphia.

They would all ride loops around the Mann Center and finish by climbing up the long hill that leads to the theater. To Leroy that hill looked like the Manayunk Wall; at first, it looked like Mt. Everest. Oelkers would ride beside him and, laying a hand on the small of his back, literally push Leroy up the hill. That might have seemed pathetic, if Leroy had felt hurt or sorry for himself, but neither self-pity nor, for that matter, self-doubt, entered into the boy's thinking. He kept at it. He kept working at that hill. After a few weeks, when he was finally able to climb it on his own, without puffing, that's when Leroy knew he would make it. He started to think of himself as an athlete, a cyclist.

If he wanted to be cyclist, however, he'd have to eat better. He cut out the chips and cookies. Leroy's pants started to fit looser. People noticed—hey, you're losing weight—and that made him walk a little taller. By the spring of his sophomore year he started to win races, like the junior division of the TD Bank Street Sprints and the Philadelphia Triathlon. People began noticing him at school. Not just as a good student, but as an athlete, too. A leader. Someone to look up to.

As Leroy progressed in the sport he came out of his shell. When reporters came to do a story on the foundation, Oelkers would pick Leroy to talk to them. He met the people on the Cadence Foundation board, the doctors and lawyers and even the boss of the whole thing, Jay Snider. Leroy could ride his bike beside Snider, who had once been president of the Philadelphia Flyers hockey team, and talk to him like any other person. Over time, from riding and talking with Oelkers and others from Cadence, Leroy learned the story behind the foundation.

He learned that Oelkers had been a professional cyclist for 10 years, building a solid career but never making it to the Olympics or the big-money European circuit. He'd won a six-day race in Moscow, and over the years had won 12 medals at the U.S. national cycling championships. Oelkers was a good sprinter and all-around track rider, strong in criterium, points, and Madison races, not so great as a hill climber. (Leroy could relate to trouble climbing.) Oelkers was also stone tough. In a criterium in 2003, he'd suffered a crash that cracked his vertebrae, broke his wrist in seven places and five of his ribs, bruised some internal organs, and put him in intensive care for five days. By the end of the season, with a cast still on his wrist, he was back racing. In 2004, with his competitive career winding down, he went to work as a coach at Cadence Cyclery, which Snider owned.

Leroy visited the store, which also served as a training center. He met the corporate attorneys spinning stationary bikes on the second floor of the renovated brick warehouse, under the hammered-steel ceiling and slowly turning fans. In the front window, bicycles costing $5,000 and more were displayed in tasteful, simple style. On weekend mornings the customers convened at the store for long rides out through Fairmount Park or they headed west on the towpath along the Schuylkill past the old shuttered factories of Norristown and Conshohocken to the rolling lanes of Valley Forge. These rich people employed Cadence trainers to ride with them, human resources every bit as high quality and tasteful as the goods in the shop. One of the store's first hires was Ryan Oelkers, who was just the sort of smart, kind, funny, attentive, loyal, other-directed coach that every prosperous citizen-athlete dreamed about.